GWU funding?

[Helix]

Not to dominate the line of queries this week, but wondered if any current students/former applicants were still around for a quick one.

I considered adding GWU to my list of non-reach schools to apply to, but noticed that the acceptance postings from the last several years were almost exclusively "admit with waitlist for funding" or "admit with no funding." Is that actually universal or extremely common? If you applied to GWU and got that kind of offer, where do you wish you applied instead (or if others want to cut in, where would be about equivalent to GW that *does* guarantee funding?)

[Penelope Higgins]

For which subfield are you considering GW? People's suggestions of comparable schools with similar methodological inclinations will be wildly different across subfields.

[Helix]

Good point--I was considering them for comparative.

[expatbayern]

The "admit lots of students, only fund a few" approach seems mainly limited to the DC schools (at least among top-50ish grad programs)--from what I know, there's a lot of this at both GW and Georgetown.

I think the idea on the schools' end is they get a lot of applicants who either: ( a ) have jobs in DC (military, policy, think tank, whatever) and are looking to add a credential on the side, or ( b ) have lawyer (or similar) spouses working in DC. Both lead to ability/willingness to pay and lack of alternate options (because of location requirement) on the part of applicants, so the schools simply charge what the market will bear.

I would venture to say that almost any similar-tier institution in a lower-demand location (and for folks studying politics, it may be that all locations are lower-demand than DC....) funds better than these schools.

Edited August 19, 2011 by expatbayern

[justanotherperson]

Helix, I noticed the exact same thing from the admission postings and was kind of waiting for some other people to bring this up, so thanks for doing that. Seems like it's the case for Georgetown as well. My subfield is IR and I'd like to focus on American foreign policy, and there are so many profs at GWU with similar research interest, but I guess I shouldn't apply for GWU knowing that it won't fund me anyways.

If this helps at all, I know MA students at American SIS can be funded based on merit. Which might mean it is generous with funding at the doctoral level too. Oh well... =(

Edited August 22, 2011 by justanotherperson

[TheCreuset]

I was accepted to GWU with no funding; the faculty are great, so it was a little disappointing, but an adviser explained that those PhD programs were somewhat specialized for policy jobs. For the record, I have a friend who was accepted and received some funding, but I imagine they were at the top of the admission pool.